Santiago’s Biggest Newspaper Takes a Visual Approach to Urban Issues

Helping people learn about their local neighbourhoods is rarely a priority for national newspapers, but in Santiago, Chile, that’s not the case. El Mercurio is widely considered to be Chile’s most influential newspaper, and their Santiago edition last year decided to take a new approach with local coverage.

Launched in July 2012, Santiago en 180° uses panoramic photography to show how the city is changing and how people are interacting with it. I recently spoke with City Editor Manuel Fernandez about the project, who explained:

We try to avoid the traditional panoramic picture that shows landscapes or buildings from a large distance. The ideal photo in “Santiago en 180°” shows places in a human-scale. The series has been a good way to show to our readers how amazing Santiago is, and now we’re doing the same with other Chilean cities that are undergoing rapid development. In fact, we recently launched “Chile en 180°.

The newspaper publishes panoramic photographs of areas in the city annotated with information such as facts about the area’s history, footfall, traffic, and notes about the changes happening nearby. Though a simple project, by rethinking what’s newsworthy El Mercurio has made urban issues accessible and interesting to millions of Chileans.